Virtually all buildings across the United States require space heating at some point during the year. Studies have suggested that 43% of all US energy is consumed in relation to buildings, including 72% of electricity and 55% of natural gas. It follows, then, that addressing building energy use is an important consideration to addressing energy issues in this and other countries, because buildings have great potential to see dramatic reductions in energy use and carbon emissions through effective temperature management. Particularly, the cooling of buildings is of great importance in today's society. Even so, as energy costs increase and the need for alternative heating systems becomes more pronounced, there might not be a single solution or best practice for addressing the challenge. Consider that conventional auxiliary heating and venting has long been used and continues to be used in order to keep the insides of buildings in a general comfort range, such as about 65-75° F. These auxiliary heating and venting systems are probably not going to go away any time soon, and the current efforts to reduce energy costs are not necessarily aimed at supplanting the auxiliary heating and venting systems. Rather, viable solutions, including those described herein, might have the effect, at least initially, of reducing the overall load placed on auxiliary heating and venting, thus reducing energy costs while keeping rooms of buildings at an acceptable comfort range. If the overall result is to save on a percentage of the annual heating load served by the auxiliary heating and venting, the heat pipe system will be providing a net gain.
Moreover, active heating systems which are known in the art typically require fans, impellers, motors, and other equipment with moving parts that wear out. These approaches, representing the primary difference between active and passive heat transfer systems, have been hampered by a number of factors. Mainly, these factors involve the equipment required for transferring a material from a first location, proximal to the heat source (e.g., solar), to a second location distal to the heat source. At the second location, the transferred energy is dissipated or otherwise distributed. Because the equipment that is used for actively transferring this material is prone to wear out and need replacing, the active systems lack overall efficiency. An improved system for heat transfer is needed.